From the floor of the House on Tuesday Night. I'll add emphasis to some parts of this speech.
100 DAYS OF EMPTY PROMISES -- (House of Representatives - December 06, 2005)
Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, today marks the 100th day since Hurricane Katrina came ashore in south Mississippi. Since that time, we have had a mixture of incredible support from the people of this Nation; but also, quite frankly, there have been a lot of promises made by the President of the United States that have yet to be fulfilled.
In 100 days since the storm, numerous regrets by me, Senator Lott, Mr. Pickering and others to try to help those people who found themselves in the horrible situation of having a home that never flooded, or a piece of land that had never flooded since the Europeans settled in Mississippi in 1699, who thought they were properly covered by having wind insurance, who thought they had taken adequate precautions to secure their home in the event of a storm, who found that their homes had flooded.
And now for 100 days, I, Senator Lott, Mr. Pickering and others have asked to try to do something to help those people. After all, every aid package the President talks about talks about tax breaks for the fat cats. Well, the fat cats are going to do just fine after the storm. They always do. They have got the money; they know how to invest it; they know how to make more money. They do not need tax breaks. The people who need help in south Mississippi are the average-Joe homeowners: the kid who coaches the Little League team, the guy or lady who sings in the choir, who find themselves now at the end of 90 days that their mortgage is due, they have lost their job, their house has been either destroyed or horribly damaged and they are looking for help from their Nation.
This is an extremely patriotic part of the country, and an extremely high percentage of those people have served in the Armed Forces or are presently serving, and all they are asking from you, Mr. President, is a little bit of consideration.
After 100 days, we had taken care of the people of New York after 9/11. After 100 days, we had taken care of the people of San Francisco. Tonight in south Mississippi, people will crawl into two and three-man tents because 12,000 families are still waiting for a FEMA trailer.
The company you gave the contract to, Bechtel Incorporated, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to your campaign and to the Republican majority. You are obviously friends. I think you can pick up the phone to the Bechtel family and ask them to finish the job.
After 100 days, only two-thirds of the people who have asked for a trailer since their home has been destroyed have received one. I did not promise those folks a trailer. You did, Mr. President. After 100 days, it has turned cold. A shower with a garden hose in August feels pretty good; a shower with a garden hose when it is 33 degrees outside is a pretty crummy experience.
The contracts for debris removal were let on a per-cubic-yard basis. Therefore, the people who did that had an incentive to work quickly because the more they did the more they got paid. The contracts to deliver FEMA trailers was paid by the month. If you pay anyone to do something by the hour as opposed to the job, it is human nature they are going to do it slower. The people of south Mississippi have waited long.
Mr. Speaker, it is time to call your friends at Bechtel and tell them to finish the job. Folks had to live in a pup tent for Thanksgiving and their patience has worn thin.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, I remember when the promise was made that you could cut taxes, increase spending, and pay down the debt. I thought that was a bunch of malarkey at the time, and it has turned out to be $2.4 trillion wrong.
But to come to south Mississippi and to promise the people in south Mississippi that you are going to get them a trailer, and not fulfill that promise or drag your feet on that promise, that is something people see every day. It is something I see every time I go home, and that is every weekend.
Mr. President, it is time for you and the people at Bechtel to do the job: to deliver the trailers that are sitting in places like Hope, Arkansas, where there are thousands of trailers sitting on the runway. Or Purvis, Mississippi, where there are over 1,200 trailers sitting on the ground, or the staging area in De Lisle or the staging area in Hancock County. They are not doing anyone any good sitting in the staging areas.
If you have to void the contract with Bechtel, by all means do so. If the Bechtel family has any respect for their good family name, I am asking them as a Member of Congress representing south Mississippi to replace the management you have in south Mississippi and get the job done because the people of south Mississippi and the people of this Nation who are paying for this deserve better.
Consider this to be a bonding experience between yourself and a Democrat who you may disagree with a lot. But, Mr. Taylor is absolutely right on target when it comes to his criticisms of the post-Katrina policy. Even in Mississippi, things appear to not be rosey. As well, i'm sure a lot of you agree with his criticisms of the Bush tax policy in this country and his comments on "the fat cats"
So, to conclude, another speech from Gene from November 28th of this year on a debate on something called the "NATIONAL FLOOD INSURANCE PROGRAM FURTHER ENHANCED BORROWING AUTHORITY ACT OF 2005".
Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, as I speak, one of the greatest legal scams in American history is being perpetrated on the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, honest Americans who purchased insurance policies to protect their families in time of a hurricane. They paid their premiums for decades. They are being told one by one ``we are not going to pay your claim.''
See, in a typical insurance policy known as a ``wind policy,'' you would think it would protect you from the 140- to 160-knot breezes of Hurricane Katrina; but somehow buried in that policy is small language that says they are not going to pay for wind-driven water.
Now, for most of us, you would think of wind-driven water as maybe the water driven under the stoop of your door in a rain storm, or if you have an older house like I had, under the windows, maybe get some curtains wet or the sheet rock under that window.
So if the wind blew a tree into your house, you could file a claim. If the wind blew a car into your house, you could file a claim. But if the wind generates a 30-foot wall of water, well, then the American insurance industry en mass is telling those people in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and the Alabama gulf coast, You're out of luck. We took your money. You're a chump.
Our Nation has a flood insurance policy separate from that where the credibility of this Nation is at stake. I have already told you what I have thought the private sector is doing to my people. But this is us. We also collected people's money in good faith that when there was a flood of their homes that would be paid. We had an unprecedented natural disaster.
Now, two things can happen. We can go the way of the private sector which is doing everything they can to scam my constituents, and please use that word, or we can honor our claims. Because a person or a nation is only as good as its word. Our Nation gave our word that we would pay these claims if substantiated. Those claims have been substantiated. Let us set a precedent that hopefully the insurance industry will follow and pay our claims.
I want to commend Chairman Oxley. I want to commend Ranking Member Frank for bringing this to the floor in a timely manner. I very much want to commend the other body for plussing this up so that we can fulfill our obligation as a Nation for those people who had flood insurance policies, that we will pay those claims in a timely manner.
At the same time I want to go on record as saying that I think there ought to be a national registry of child molesters and, at the moment, insurance industry executives because I think Americans ought to know if they live near one.
One phrase I just thought of during this diary is "Fire-breathing Democrats." Even if he's more conservative than you and me, Gene Taylor fits that title. This is a guy who said "When George Bush was chasing girls at Yale, Wesley Clark was chasing Viet Cong in Vietnam" afterall.
So yes, I promised one speech, gave you two, and a quote bashing Bush. Everybody wins, except for the insurance companies and Bechtel.